Reading Group: Daniel Kehlmann's "Die Vermessung der Welt"/"Measuring the World"

Tuesday, April 25, 2017 6:30 pm - 6:30 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

German cover art for Daniel Kehlmann's book,
The Waterloo Centre for German Studies is once again offering a reading group. This term, we'll be reading Daniel Kehlmann's Die Vermessung der Welt/Measuring the World. Knowledge of German isn't necessary - English copies of the book are available - and we speak whatever language the participants wish to converse in.

Please note, all available spots are taken for this evening. If you'd like to be on a dedicated list for the reading group, you can sign up here. This list is separate from our general mailing list, so you'll only get updates about the reading group.

Book Summary

Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene. Young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s brilliant comic novel revolves around the meeting of two colossal geniuses of the Enlightenment.
     Late in the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home. Terrifyingly famous and wildly eccentric, these two polar opposites finally meet in Berlin in 1828, and are immediately embroiled in the turmoil of the post-Napolean world.